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@BHG
You can memorize lists a lot faster if you practice the techniques in Use Your Perfect Memory by Tony Buzan or Millionaire Memory by Dave Farrow but Millionaire Memory is a lot more expensive you are talking hundreds of dollars for DVDs vs maybe less than twenty dollars for a book but it is free if you have really good interlibrary loan privelleges
@BHG
Also I do not think that is a new approach if you study ancient Greek or Latin I think the teachers like to point out the connections with modern English because old people I know who learned foreign languages liked to point out etymology a lot and would frequently explain how whatever English word traced back to Greek or Latin
Maybe they do not do that anymore or do not do that with modern languages so much so you have not seen it emphasized so much in a language class before